Portraits
by Cannanan
Summary: Clary and Isabelle exchange sketches. Clizzy.


** I'm barely half way through the main series but I feel these pairing in my bones.**

* * *

Clary always knew that she would enjoy drawing Isabelle. Where Jace and Alec were all sharp edges and straight lines, she was curves and soft, delicate features. She smiled at her from where she sat, sprawled across her bed with one of her fashion magazines on hand. It was a pleasant sort of smile, lit up by glossy lips and white teeth; the sort of smile that betrayed nothing of the ferocious, predatory instincts by which she lived her life.

If Jace, with his golden curls and gleaming eyes, was a lion waiting to pounce, then Isabelle, with her dark tresses melting into her black dress and her shadowy, distracted eyes, was a snake too indifferent to bite. Biding her time with petty amusements, waiting for a _need_ to strike, all the while drawing the eye from her venomous fangs with her pretty scales.

Knowing this, there was a time, not too long ago, when Clary would have been more than a little intimidated by the whip coiled around her wrist— always coiled around her wrist, more an old friend than a weapon— but now she only stopped to regard it briefly as she etched it onto paper, a slim chord wrapped gracefully around the slimmest part of her arm.

"Are you done yet? I'm bored."

The blunt, yet oddly flippant, question reached her ears in Isabelle's charming, dulcet tones. She was frowning, creasing the edge of the page she was on between her index finger and thumb as she looked to Clary expectantly.

"I promise I'm almost done. Just don't move." she assured, returning her frown with a bright smile.

Isabelle sighed the sigh of a martyr in a Greek tragedy.

"I've been not moving for two hours. There comes a time when a girl just has to move."

"It hasn't been two hours."

But she wasn't sure this was true. She had come around under the pretense of gaining some sort of weapon training from the girl. Jace had been reluctant to allow her to fight with anything that wasn't firmly attached to her at this point in time, but she had managed to rope the other girl into going behind his back with it, if only for the sake of emergencies. That was around two or three in the afternoon, then after about thirty minutes of trying to teach Clary how to use a dagger, Isabelle had decided that was enough learning for the day and had marched off to her room for a break, a bemused Clary in tow. The light outside her windows was fading fast, and their 'break' still hadn't ended yet.

"Sorry, but I really do just need to add a few more details. I'll be done in a sec."

Isabelle didn't respond, but she could tell her impatience was growing by the minute. It was with urgent speed that she sketched the last few lines of her dark hair, the hair that had always stood out to Clary for being so impossibly silky and neat for the amount of it she had, drawing the Isabelle on the paper as close to the Isabelle on the bed as she could.

"Done."

And like a bolt of lighting she was off the bed and standing beside her, looming over her with her tall, willowy frame, staring intently at the drawing. Clary, meanwhile, was mentally patting herself on the back for not screaming in surprise.

"It's so pretty, Clary. I love it!" she exclaimed suddenly, causing Clary to jolt in surprise.

"I-It is?"

"Wait, no. I've changed my mind. It's _too_ pretty." She felt a sinking feeling in her chest as she looked between the dark haired girl and the picture. "It looks nothing like me."

"It looks just like you… to me, anyway." she said quietly, fixing her eyes on a blank spot on the sheet of paper.

She didn't reply, and Clary couldn't bring herself to face her. She knew the comment had thrown her more than it should have, but it was disheartening. She had thought she could draw Isabelle, beautiful, ferocious Isabelle. That she had somehow seen more beauty in her subject than she held seemed impossible— she had an artist's eye, and an artist's eye didn't lie.

After a long moment, she found herself watching as the sketchbook was snatched out of her lap.

"Let me try." Isabelle's voice had returned to her, bubbling and brimming with excitement. "Let me draw you, I mean."

"I— okay." Judging by her tone, she was going to try whether she liked the idea or not. Might as well cooperate.

Clary straightened up, remembering the way her mother had told her to sit all those years ago when she had painted a little, six year old Clary. She hadn't been able to keep it up for five minutes then, but now she let ten, fifteen, twenty wash over her in quiet stillness.

Could Isabelle draw? She guessed she wouldn't be too surprised. Jace could play piano, after all, so apparently it wasn't beyond shadowhunters to have hobbies that didn't involve potentially killing themselves or others. When she seemed to be absorbed enough in the pen and paper, Clary flicked her glance down, not to look at the drawing growing on the page, but to look at the girl sitting cross-legged on the floor.

She looked like she was concentrating so hard that she was surprised the pen hadn't broken under the pressure, but there was something off about her expression. Clary had seen her kill demons. She'd seen the look of sheer dedication and exhilaration on her face when she had that whip unfurled and slicing at bad guys. She had _seen_ Isabelle concentrate, and this wasn't what it looked like on her. She realized, with a bit of surprise, that she was faking it, and almost laughed out loud at the thought.

"Done." Her voice demanded attention, and Clary paid what it was due, slinking down from the chair to sit next to her on the carpet. With some mix of anticipation and curiosity, she observed the drawing on the page, and this time, however hard she tried, she couldn't help but laugh.

She hoped it didn't sound mocking, because she really didn't mean for it to be. It was more out of shock than anything else. Isabelle had spent a good thirty minutes seemingly drawing _intently_, but, looking at it now, it was nothing more than a few circles with a mess of spirally hair on top. She saw Isabelle as a goddess of beauty, and Isabelle saw Clary as an egg with some squiggly lines.

"Isabelle," she breathed when she caught her breath, choking back another fit of giggles, "I love you, but you really can't draw."

She wondered why Isabelle was staring at her. At first she thought she had seriously offended her. Maybe she'd been brought up thinking she was a great artist— Jace and Alec didn't exactly have any drawing talent to brag about either— but then again, maybe not. The look in her dark eyes as they burrowed into her was not one of anger, or even disappointed, just a still sort of surprise that seemed to extend to her suddenly stiff shoulders, her frozen hands, her parted lips.

"Isabelle?" She leaned over to set a hand on the girl's shoulder, remembering the way her brothers always addressed her, "Um, Izzy?"

"Don't say that, Clary." she said at last. She made no attempt to remove the hand from her shoulder, but Clary felt as though she had been shoved away.

"Sorry. Do you not like it when people who aren't family call you that?"

"No, I didn't mean—… You can call me Izzy." She gave a half shrug. "Just don't say you love me. It's not true."

She didn't sound sad or angry, not the way Clary would have expected someone to sound while saying something so bleak. It was as if it was a simple fact to her, nothing more personal than a line in a textbook. For excitable, emotionally-driven Isabelle, the tone of such complete apathy was more alien to Clary than anything else she had seen the girl say or do, and she had seen Isabelle kill things with stilettos. The heels, not the daggers.

"No." she found herself saying before her better judgement could make any attempt to stop her. "_You_ don't say that. You don't get to decide who I care about."

"Drop it, okay?"

"Just because you go around playing with people hearts like it's some kind of game, it doesn't mean everyone does. If I say I love you I—"

"Clary." There was an edge to her voice, something sharp, and jarring, and distinctly not Isabelle. In it, Clary heard her brothers. She heard Alec and his reluctance to admit the emotions that he let lay dormant for years. She heard Jace and his insistence than love destroyed. She had always thought that Isabelle was different. Isabelle was lithe and pretty, she flounced around with boys and had fun, and she never seemed afraid of love— but then, she never _saw_ any of it as love. A Lightwood was a Lightwood, Clary eventually concluded, and the only thing a Lightwood feared was feeling something for someone.

Clary couldn't fight demons and rogue downworlders the way they could. She couldn't do flips or kicks. She couldn't even handle a dagger well enough to train with one for more than thirty minutes. Her hands trembled the second they touched a blade, but her hands _didn't_ tremble as they moved from Isabelle's shoulders, coming to rest on either side of her face. She didn't even feel afraid as she leaned toward the other girl slowly and lightly brushed her lips over hers.

Isabelle stiffened, and Clary quickly made to move back, fearing that she hadn't given her ample time to push her away if she wanted to, but in a second it was gone. The stiffness, the fear, the space between them. Far from pushing her away, Isabelle had drawn her closer, gently tilting her head up so that she could kiss the much smaller girl her with more ease.

It was obvious just from the _way_ she kissed her that this wasn't something new for Isabelle— impromptu kissing, that was. Clary was leaning close enough to her frame to hear her heartbeat, and it wasn't hammering, it wasn't racing the way she was sure hers was; it was steady, steady and comforting. Clary's face was burning, but somehow Isabelle kept her cool well enough to smile against her lips. She even thought she felt her giggle, but all the sound in the room seemed to have disappeared, like a TV turned on mute. Anyone would have thought it was the clearly experienced dark beauty that had initiated the kiss, not the freckled little thing nestled in her arms.

Isabelle shifted to lean into her, hands tangling in her auburn hair, and as she did, Clary felt a paper crumpling beneath her. Pulling away suddenly, she moved her knees back from where they had been digging into her sketchbook, hands grasping for the torn up sheet between herself and the girl she had stopped kissing for the sake of saving a drawing.

"Your picture of me—"

"By the angel, Clary." She thought she might sound angry, if not about the drawing then about the kiss or about its abrupt end, but she was blinked, and when she opened her eyes again it wasn't Isabelle the Lightwood sitting in front of her anymore, it was just… Isabelle.

"Honestly, you were so right. I can't draw at all. Yours was way better."


End file.
